


start talkin again (when i know what to say)

by MajorEnglishEsquire



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Family, Healing, Sad, Season/Series 12, Team Free Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-05 21:46:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10317641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorEnglishEsquire/pseuds/MajorEnglishEsquire
Summary: Dean doesn't know how to tell anyone that the status-quo is killing him.Takes place shortly after12.15.





	

"Do you know you do that?" Sam says on the breath of a half-laugh.

Dean is zoned-out, staring at the motel fridge and not seeing it. "Do what?"

"You- _ugh_. You sit there with your mouth on your phone?"

Dean blinks. Blinks across the kitchenette table at Sam, his face kinda disgusted and concerned over his laptop.

He realizes his mouth is pressed to the bottom of his cell phone. He sits that way, sometimes, with his lips pressed to the firm line of its base or just tapping it against his chin or thinking.

"Like, the first thing I saw you do when we got this room was toss your keys and your phone on the bedspread and you _know_ they don't bother washing the bedspreads in these places. Not to mention how many times you've set your phone down on, like, a counter? Tables in diners? _Chairs??_ Dropped it on the bathroom floor?" Sam shivers dramatically. "It's gross, dude. You don't know where your phone ends up and then I see you with your-"

Actually, he's totally right. It is pretty gross. "Oh my god." He gets up.

"Dude," Sam objects as he digs through his bags for the bleach wipes he uses on the bathroom sinks every time they check into a place like this.

"You pointed it out."

"Get your own fucking Clorox wipes you-"

"Oh, god, I'll buy you another pack," he is totally exhausted.

He wipes off his phone. Uses the wipe on his hands and.... goes to wash his face. Like, why not.

And while the cell phone dries on the counter, he stares at his own dripping face in the mirror.

Dean doesn't know how to tell anyone that the status-quo is killing him.

Actually, he doesn't want anyone to know that, but he wouldn't even know how to put it into words if he did.

The punishing pace the Brits have them hunting at would have been a welcome and obvious reprieve from _thinking_.

Before their prison stint, it would have been.

He keeps trying to force it, now. Keeps trying to make that true. Keeps pretending he's thinking about the job and zoning out over case files.

Before he was alone in a cell for months, he had no problem being absorbed by the work.

It shouldn't be so hard to slip back into that.

He pulls the knob, takes a handful of water from the faucet, slams it off. Gulps, swishes, spits. His dripping mouth reflected at him in the mirror.

Spent one too many long days finally looking himself in the eye.

That, more than anything, was the awful, awful truth of why he took the deal with Billie.

It's hard to live with yourself when you've spent so much effort relegating so much hurt to the rear-view mirror.

In that cell, it was like all those things were standing directly behind him. Waiting. Waiting to talk because he had no one else to talk to.

He tried. God, did he try. Sam must have, too. Using fucking torn sheets and food to try to summon, conjure, ouija, trying to set off sparks against the bedframe with a screw and failing to make flames and getting yanked out in the morning. Once his cell was cleaned, the sheets replaced and everything too tidy for spellwork, he was crammed back in before they moved on to the next cell. Over and over again.

Not a glimpse of Sam. Hands on the brick, forehead pressed to the wall, he barely even saw the guards' faces.

And past the point where he could conjure mental images of his family? Just his own ugly mug.

There were things he had to face up to in that small mirror every day.

A lot of it hurt and then he began to wonder _why **all of it** had to hurt_.

Him and Sam? They've saved this world. It took him weeks to say the words out loud to himself, but he did come to acknowledge that in his cell. Much as they've fucked up, they've also done some damn good. He knows that.

_We saved the world. We don't deserve this._

No one deserves that kind of incarceration. That shit would make anyone batty.

Being alone so long, alone and living for the kill in Purgatory? Now, that changed something in him. Hardened his spine when he'd felt weak for so long. After living with Lisa and Ben, he had taken the Campbells' mocking to heart and thought of himself as soft for _so long_ until he was _breathing_ blood and sweat in Purgatory for a solid year.

Alone there, before Benny and even after toting him along, there was some mission. Something to reach for. Something to grab at: He had to find Cas. It kept his heart pumping, his legs moving, his ears finely-tuned to every brush of every branch for a half mile in all directions.

When he was there, he felt the wrongness of his own presence in Purgatory - in that place of punishment, of _purgation_. Felt himself radiating and seeking. Trying to find his angel and his exit. Not pay for his sins - just revel in them. Committed some of them _twice_ , in fact, chopping into monsters he'd met before and cutting them down again.

And in that prison cell it had been the opposite. He'd been muted. Wanted to throw himself against the walls like the last, dying gasps of a moth on display.

Not being able to reach for anything -- Sam, Mom, Cas -- was killing him slow and, in that light, Billie looked like she held mercy in her eyes.

That may be why this mirror, this motel room, this case, this side of the country is killing him.

He has a job to do and Sam's got a path and a plan thrown out in front of them. Working with the BMOLs is as good as anything else right now, he supposes.

Keeps him from screaming into the night, shooting at the sky, driving fast for who-knows-where and fucking _daring_ somebody to come and try to beat his angel. Hurt his _family_.

Dread, thick like tar and making it hard to drink, hard to eat, lives underneath his lungs and is waiting.

A moment will come, someday soon, where their broken deal will punish them.

It feels -- and he knows why -- it _feels_ like it's only circling Cas's head. It feels like Dean's family is gonna be punished through Cas and it weighs him down with a thick-sick simmering fear. This shouldn't be on Cas. Him and Sam made the deal. Cas only broke it because he loves them. Because they've got their Mom, now, and if Cas couldn't bear to see any of them die before, _now_ he--

Any moment when Cas is out of his range, or when he isn't calling, when he isn't holed up safe in their home, is a moment when Cas might get skewered again and die in agony with none of them to stop it.

Hope keeps trying to buck him up. It's got Sam's voice and it says, _Look, he already had to go through that. He already almost died. Maybe he's already been punished for the broken deal. Maybe he'll be fine._

But how many fucking times is Dean gonna have to watch him almost-die? It's like Cas's funeral has a standing reservation hollowed out in his chest. It's getting to be unbearable, just _waiting to build pyres_.

Cas loves them. Loves their Mom like she was his own. Mom led him into that shit-show with Ramiel in the first place and almost got him killed and none of their fuck-ups ever matter. Cas thinks it all still comes down weighing more on their side. He's devoted, love-blind, and casually sipping the Winchester Kool-Aid. Which is, in turns, wonderful and terrifying.

Cas loves them and he's gonna get punished for it. When Dean sits and can't focus on his work, he comes to a deeper and deeper understanding of this every day. It's gonna happen. It's gonna happen and Cas is _miles_ away from them. States away.

So he sits. His phone pressed to his lips. And when he comes up with reasons, plots out actions? They're with that mirror in mind. He wishes he could make that mirror go away.

Every one of Castiel's ends is reflected. On display in Dean's past.

Never would have heard Cas tell him he was loved if any of those deaths really ended him.

There are.... tangles. Miles of tangled wire where he's connected to Cas.

The throbbing power source of it? All the grace that Cas has used to glue Dean back together. He feels it within himself ever since that time in the cell.

Quiet inside of him.

He was afraid to pray to Cas in that cell. Afraid for the first week and then he did it and it didn't seem to matter.

And he knows why. He knows why. He can hardly believe it, but he _knows_ why. Or at least he's beginning to understand something big in the background.

His whole _being_ was reaching out, searching for Cas in Purgatory. Praying hard for him, relentlessly. Every goddamn time he plotted a new point on his mental map, killed a creature, found a trace of Cas, or so much as stopped for a nap and a piss he was praying to that one angel.

In the cell he encountered a problem.

He faced that mirror and counted all the times he got Cas killed and he wondered.

Wondered if Cas and Mom were alive and together if maybe they were better people. Faster, more efficient hunters. Wondered if maybe the world were better off in their care.

Yeah, so, he wondered that for a good few days before the silence really sank its sharp-cold teeth into him and he wanted out. Wanted his family. Wanted to keep running and hunting. Bugging his brother, learning from his mom, and testing every fucking limit Cas had to see if, as he'd begun to suspect, Castiel's limits apply to everyone except Dean Fucking Winchester.

So this is fucked up. But he knows why Cas, receptive as he is, couldn't hear his prayers.

That tangle between them - they're _too tangled_.

Cas says it's been harder to hear prayers since he's been so far from heaven for so long.

But Sam and Dean? He always hears the two of them.

The problem is they're so tangled now, Cas couldn't tell the difference between what was inside him and the prayers coming at him, muted by distance, walls, hopelessness - fuck it, probably even military technology.

He saw it in Castiel's eyes when Billie dropped to the ground in front of him.

Family isn't tied to blood, alone, but you wouldn't know it these days. Dean figures he's got so much of Cas's grace holding his bones together and Cas has got such an encompassing love for them that it's as if they've donated what's in their own veins to each other in every crisis. They already share a history, share a language, share a... passion? Maybe? For what it is that they do for a living.

They're getting closer. Even with as distant as Mom's been, it still feels like they're getting closer. What Cas said, cracking black and dying, only sealed the deal.

And after their prison stint it is just... so unbearable to be separated from his family.

Cas looked so fucking terrified of losing them. Dean keeps having to witness him with that horrified look of loss and it's gutting him slow and painful.

They'd been without Mom forever. But going without Cas after he almost got yanked out of the mortal coil again?

It's making Dean miserable.

They fucked up. In so many ways. From Cain to the BMOLs to Morningstar Junior, all they've been doing for years is fucking up and sweeping up.

Dean has his phone out all the time because he wants it to ring. He wants Cas to call. He wants Cas to come home.

As conflicted as he is about Mom, he's terrified that, instead, the next call will be some limey telling him about _the unfortunate demise of the Winchester matriarch_ or some shit.

The phone is killing him. Cas's silence is killing him. The all-day, all-year high-level fear is killing him.

He goes back into the room. Plops back down at the kitchenette table scrubbing a hand over his face.

He zones out on the window this time.

"I'm... gonna... um. Go," he eventually sighs.

Sam taps his pencil. "Go?"

"Go to Cas. Go help him find Mamma Kline. Go where we're really needed."

Sam flips the case file open again. Shoves it in front of him. "We're needed _here_."

"Yeah we are," he says, his voice as tired as the rest of him. "But I've never heard Cas pray to me because I can't. And he shouldn't have to call us every time he needs us. Strangers can call. The Men of Letters can call. Cas shouldn't have to _call_ ," he slaps his phone face-down on the table and finally turns to focus on his brother.

Sam bites his lip. Taps the pages again. Looks from the gruesome pictures to the newspaper clippings to the laptop to his suit jacket hanging on the bathroom door. "I feel the same way."

He didn't actually expect Sam to say that. But great. You know, set aside all the extraneous bullshit, the sudden rise of International Hunter Politics and the stupid sins of omission and the identity crisis they're putting their formerly-dead mother through. Leave it where it lies and focus. "Who do we hand this case off to?"

"Uh. I'm gonna lie? Call Mick and tell him Cas has a lead and he needs to put someone else on this one so--"

"We let him rope more hunters into this? We let him push the job off on his guys who do it piss-poor or Mom who should be with us?"

"Mom has to decide to be with us. We already choose each other every time. Dean, if you wanna choose Cas over some strangers, that makes it my choice, too. I don't _want_ to leave this hunt but if something's telling you that Cas needs our help, that's where we go."

Dean sits up, shakes his head. "That's not-- my Spidey senses aren't tingling or anything. I just." He stops. Shrugs.

He's given a _look_. "Dean."

"It doesn't work both ways, I'm telling you. I can't hear him, I'm." Dean stops again.

He. Stops dead.

He. He can't. He...... can't, can he?

The looming shape behind their deal with Billie. The twisted reasons he felt like he couldn't contact Cas while he was locked up -- but couldn't breathe right without him all the same.

And a gut feeling. Jesus.

"I'll, um." He snaps up his cell phone. "I'll be right back."

Dean goes to step outside.

He looks up, to the clouds and sky that have forsaken his best friend just because his wings were stolen from him.

The heavens where his so-called family sits, shunning him or scared of him.

Where his Father disappeared off to with his sister and no further explanation to Cas about why he's let all this shit happen to him.

He calls.

"Dean," Cas says.

Shit. Sam can't possibly be right about this.

But Cas is breathy and relieved. He picked up immediately, like he had his phone in his hand, too.

"Dean? Are you alright?" he fishes for him.

"I'm. No. No, I'm not. I'm completely.... where are you?"

"Staking out a warehouse," he sounds so fed up. So sick of being alone.

Dean paces the parking lot some. "I'm starting to wonder if you can't hear me praying so much anymore because you can't tell the difference between what you want and what I want."

Cas is a suspended breath over the line. "That's. An." He hesitates. "Um. Interesting theory."

"Is it? 'Cause Sam just told me I want to drop this case and go work with you because you're vibing at me and I can hear it."

Cas clears his throat. "I have to admit there might be something to that."

Dean has to laugh because, really, seriously, this is hilarious. Absurd and hilarious. "Why do you say that?"

"Because." He takes a huge breath. "I encountered one of my brothers. I went to consult with the other angels and. And I couldn't handle it. I had to leave. I don't know what they had planned but. I had to leave."

Fuck. Dean's felt like hell. He's been distracted and short of breath and-- who knows what they could have done to him. He felt like he had to do this on his own? And you know what--

No. Goddamnit, Cas never should have felt like he had to listen to any of those bastards. Fuck this. They should have met with him weeks ago.

Dean lets go a deep breath and grabs a handful of his hair, yanking and walking and trying to focus on the positive – that Cas didn't fall for it. Whatever it was, it wouldn't have helped. It wouldn't have been good. And he wouldn't have been doing it with _family_.

"On top of it," Cas adds, wry, "I've been somewhat melancholy and distracted all day and. Well. You'll forgive me, but that's exactly what you sound like right now. And I've wanted spaghetti and egg rolls all day. So, considering I don't eat or get hungry, the spaghetti has to be you and-"

"I stole both Sam's egg rolls last night," he says, dumbfounded, stopped in his tracks in the middle of the parking lot.

"That would be why Sam wants them so much and why they've been secondarily on my mind every time I think about getting spaghetti. They don't typically sell those items in the same places?" Cas sounds confused about that. "I don't know why. American food is American food."

Dean bristles. "One is Italian and the other's Chinese, of course they wouldn't be in the same place."

He gets a clear mental image of Cas throwing up his other hand like _whatever, human_.

"Did you just roll your eyes at me? Because I feel like you just rolled your eyes at me."

"There might be something to your connection theory," Cas says, dry.

Dean keeps wandering, listening to Cas shift on the other side of the country because Castiel knows it's polite to make noise so the other person still knows you're on the line but he has to fabricate little human sounds. He eventually settles for tapping his finger against something.

"I've felt like shit ever since." Dean doesn't say _ever since you said you loved us and left anyway_.

"I've felt worse," his voice is uncharacteristically thin, emotion-stuffed and quiet.

"That must be why I can't shake it."

"I feel stupid that I didn't realize it was you sooner. I missed you. So much." Cas doesn't say _when I thought I'd lost you_ but Dean still knows he's talking about weeks past, when they went missing.

"It's not supposed to work this way. I'm not supposed to be able to feel this. How were you supposed to know it started happening? I'm not even sure it has." He just doesn't understand this. Doesn't understand how it could fucking be possible. Maybe the angels _did_ do something to Cas when they met and he didn't notice.

"Sam is more faint but I felt a spike of impatience just a moment ago. Personally, I'm happier right now than I've been all week so if he interrupts our conversation in a moment, I think we can confirm it's happening."

Dean turns and waits. Sees a shadow moving across the room beyond the motel curtains. "Should we, like, find a way to keep this from getting worse? Do we think it's a side-effect of something? A spell?"

Cas's breath gusts across the line. Like reluctance.

"I mean. We don't _have to_ do anything about it if you don't want to." Because, actually, it's... kinda cool? In a way?

"Does it make you feel-"

"I like it," Dean says instantly. "I mean-" but before he can backtrack-

"Now that I know what I'm looking for, I can likely separate feeling from prayer. I assume it won't always work. Like when there's a surge of information across 'angel radio'. Things might get loud and blur."

"It doesn't-- it's not gonna bug you? Are you sure?" he watches as Sam comes out of the room with the first two bags. He dumps them by the back tire when Dean doesn't move to unlock the trunk fast enough.

"I find it comforting." A frustrated gust of breath. "I wish I had understood while you were in custody."

"Maybe it was just starting then. Don't beat yourself up ab-"

"I _missed you_ ," he stresses again. Sighs. "Sam is-"

Sam hip-checks Dean out of the way to arrange the last of the stuff in the trunk. "I'm checking us out."

Dean shoulders the phone. "You talked to Mick?"

"Yep." He closes the car up and marches to the front office.

He brings the phone back up to his ear. "Sammy won't like that it's easier for someone else to know what's happening in his head."

"I know. I've been able to block out your thoughts before, this should only be slightly more complicated. He has a significant set of personal mental blocks in place already. It's likely I'll never be able to feel him in the way I feel you."

Dean goes warm. Warm and comfortable. "Geeze. I think we did this to ourselves. I feel like I ought to be more freaked out about it?"

"It honestly makes sense to me. By that I mean, well. Angels do it all the time. It makes sense to me that _my_ family should."

Alright. That makes Dean want to tell him he loves him.

He.... probably already knows.

"Well. My family sticks close. That's why we're comin' to get you. Winchesters stay together. It makes sense to me that my family should," he tosses those words back at him. "Okay?"

"Dean," he says. "Thank you."

He feels a lot better than before he made the call. "Yeah. Yeah, Cas."

"What about Mary?"

Dean sighs. Can't feel her at all. He has no idea if she's awake or asleep, even. But it took the three of them years to get to this point. They've been sharing secrets, foxholes, and long, grinding days with each other for so long. They've saved this planet together. Maybe it takes a while to set in.

"I think I can hear her sometimes. I'm not entirely sure if she understands she can pray to me," Cas comments.

"We'll tell her. She shouldn't get left out if she wants to." Mom's kind of old-school. This might be too much for her.

Cas is quiet for a while. Sam comes back. "I like this," Cas says.

Dean smiles because, "Yeah. I can tell. You're right - I do feel dumb for not noticing before. But. We've been busy."

"Better late than never. Dean?"

"Sam's back. We're gonna hit the road."

"I know. But, Dean?" he calls for his attention again.

"Yeah."

Cas weighs his words and they lighten the heavy gloom in Dean's chest before they even cross the line. "I can't wait to have you here. I love you. Tell Sam so he can do his research and decide if he needs me to be quiet."

Dean blushes, all the same, hearing it aloud. Sam dumps himself into the passenger seat and Dean wanders for one more moment. "There used to be a fuck-ton of angels. Will you be lonely if it's just you and me?"

"No," Cas's voice smiles, soft and human-like. "No, probably exactly the opposite. You carry Sam inside you, anyway. Mary, as well. And Bobby and Charlie. All our friends, all your loved ones. You are full up of family, Dean. I already value even the smallest connection to that. Dean? Be careful. Drive fast. I'll be listening."

He smiles. Happy and, for once, uncomplicated, despite what all this means. "Me too."

He hangs up. He's never felt this. Always been kind of afraid of the head tricks after his time under threat as a meatsuit for Michael.

But this is different. The truth of it hums in him. It feels good. Good like when Cas is home with them and safe from a world that's treated him like trash.

Treated them all like hell.

They're Winchesters. They save this fool planet all the time.

Fuck it. Maybe he should be more wary of it but--

It feels like a comfort he finally deserves.

Sam smiles when he sits down in the car. "Cas tell you to stop worrying and listen to The Force?"

"I mean. Kinda." He settles in and starts the car. "You ever think we'd run across a curse we didn't wanna break?"

He shrugs. "I donno. Thought that's kinda what we do."

"What if we're a curse, though?" He motions between them, encompasses all the seats in the car so Sam gets his meaning. All of them. Everybody. The Winchesters & Co. "Do we let somebody else break us?"

"Hell no," Sam scoffs.

"Yeah," Dean directs the Impala towards I-70, full of warmth and confidence and peace. Borrowing each feeling and finding that they fit pretty well. "Yeah. I hear that."

**Author's Note:**

> ([X](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB_2CUj3y6Y))


End file.
